where my blog is a place where i write and share. i made a tumblr account - live from noel - as a place where i can store things that i think about but don't really belong anywhere else.
there's also a live feed on the link above. though not as nice as the real thing.
instead of my normal posts, i wanted to take this wednesday out to gush about my three new favorite (free) technology-related finds.
1. priority inbox by google: though not for everyone, i would definately recommend trying it out if you are an email addict like me. my two big issues with my inbox: a) it's not clean enough, i don't like when it flows onto another page or contains too many emails, they all are just screaming "unproductive" at me and b) since my work and personal emails are connected in my gmail inbox, i am constantly (like once a minute) checking my email. all the time. and it takes up precious time that i should be spending doing actual work. these two work together to cause a third issue - when a junk email comes into my inbox, i can't ignore it, i must look over it, perhaps click through and be done with it so i can keep my inbox as clean as possible. oh no! i see how i've now shown everyone how depressingly anal i am about these things. oh well. anyways, with priority inbox, i can safely ignore mass emails without getting my panties in a twist. i check my inbox less frequently because i only look for my important emails and, thus, i get shit done.
2. boxee: so, in switching from corporate to non-profit, i have unfortunatley had to make a few switched that i'm not so happy with. like, not only canceling my cable tv subscription but also canceling my hbo, starz, showtime and cinemax (complete with on demand). wah! the only reason i was sorta okay with losing my tv is because i know most tv shows are available on the internet. but, since i still had my beautiful flat-screen hdtv, i stopped at tekserve, picked up a couple key cables for like $20 and hooked my shit up. now, in addition to my wii, i got my laptop hooked to the tv. but, getting up and down to mess with my laptop isn't so cool (i missed my remotes!). so i hooked it up further in two key ways: a) getting my netflix disc for wii and b) signing up for boxee and picking up a battery for my apple remote. boxee aggregates and delivers all the free (legally free) television around the internet and has a fair share of movies available, in addition to syncing your netflix, pandora, youtube and local resources in one app that can be controlled via your apple remote. thus, i am able to lay on my bed and zone out to tv, movies, and music with my beloved remotes again. it makes my soul happy.
3. OmmWriter: faithful followers may have read that this blog is part of larger writing project of mine. writing is something that i enjoy and i'm trying to get used to writing every day (even when i don't have too much to say), expressing myself more concisely, sharpening my arguments and interacting with my friends (and other readers!). another part of the writing project consists of a memoir. and OmmWriter is what i depend on to make this happen. it's a word processing program, but one that takes up the entire screen (so you aren't constantly looking at the time or your gmail account or the pop-up of instand messages), has nice ambient music and an extremely satisfying key stroke noise. for those who want to spend more time writing, just writing, OmmWriter is mad cool.
Just a small post on something that I came across today.
I'm a fan of Raw Toast Design - one of the prints hangs prominently in my bedroom! When I received an email from the artist, Jessie, asking for his blog readers to vote for East Side Community High, a school in grave need of an educational grant (and threw in a free print!), I could not refuse. He writes back:
Unfortunately this Kohl's Cares challenge looks like it will largely (maybe entirely) go to the schools that already have substantial budgets in place and were able to market themselves the best (via free iPad incentives, helicopter rides, and paid advertising) with those budget dollars and not the schools that really really need this money. This school can’t even afford new computers for themselves let alone give them away in exchange for votes like many of the leading schools are doing. May the most deserving schools win... and hopefully not only the ones with the biggest advertising budgets.
This was the first thing I noticed when I went on the Kohl's facebook site. All the top schools were Jewish private schools who had the technology and spread to create a campaign to win this challenge. Kohl's relies on the larger community to vote for the schools that are most deserving. However, the "larger community" is not the larger community when it doesn't take into consideration the substantial barriers to technology that schools face when they are underfunded and in poor communities (largely of color) who do not have the same access, networking capacity and time to launch large scale campaigns such as the one Jesse describes above.
Who's idea was it to start a campaign that could ostensibly give money to schools who are already well-funded, or at least much more funded than other schools? Did anyone consider the logistically issues that would pop up in such a funding contest. It's just so frustrating when campaigns that are supposed to do good are not thought out. Social media networking is not necessarily the be all end all answer to social issues and problems and how to solve them and how to choose worthiness. What happens is all the underserved students remain underserved.
